Like Godot, this book is both comic and perplexing. Readers with an absurdist sensibility will appreciate the slow pacing....
It would be wrong to say that this book is Waiting for Godot with dogs, despite superficial similarities.
This graphic novel isn’t much like Samuel Beckett’s play, although it is arranged in scenes. The main problem in Godot is existential angst. The main problem in this comic is doorknobs. Dogs can’t open doors, so they have to wait for their owners to bring them food, and the wait is endless, because every human in the world seems to have disappeared after an unnamed disaster. There are lengthy, circular conversations about food: “I’m hungry.” “Aren’t you always hungry?” The comic book has more fight scenes than Godot, which means there are multiple appearances by the book’s funniest character, a flea who’s read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. He’s always ready to give the dogs cryptic advice: “The opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.” Unfortunately, whenever he leaves the story, the dialogue turns mundane. Here’s Scene 3 in its entirety: “How come you get to lie on the couch?” Some readers will find the banality hilarious. No other post-apocalyptic novel has this many conversations about furniture. And the black-and-white artwork is endearingly primitive. The dogs are shaped like little sausages or maybe heretofore-undiscovered continents.
Like Godot, this book is both comic and perplexing. Readers with an absurdist sensibility will appreciate the slow pacing. Other children may get tired of waiting. (Graphic fantasy. 8-12)Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61963-442-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
A sympathetic, compelling introduction to wolves from the perspective of one wolf and his memorable journey.
Separated from his pack, Swift, a young wolf, embarks on a perilous search for a new home.
Swift’s mother impresses on him early that his “pack belongs to the mountains and the mountains belong to the pack.” His father teaches him to hunt elk, avoid skunks and porcupines, revere the life that gives them life, and “carry on” when their pack is devastated in an attack by enemy wolves. Alone and grieving, Swift reluctantly leaves his mountain home. Crossing into unfamiliar territory, he’s injured and nearly dies, but the need to run, hunt, and live drives him on. Following a routine of “walk-trot-eat-rest,” Swift traverses prairies, canyons, and deserts, encountering men with rifles, hunger, thirst, highways, wild horses, a cougar, and a forest fire. Never imagining the “world could be so big or that I could be so alone in it,” Swift renames himself Wander as he reaches new mountains and finds a new home. Rife with details of the myriad scents, sounds, tastes, touches, and sights in Swift/Wander’s primal existence, the immediacy of his intimate, first-person, present-tense narration proves deeply moving, especially his longing for companionship. Realistic black-and-white illustrations trace key events in this unique survival story, and extensive backmatter fills in further factual information about wolves and their habitat.
A sympathetic, compelling introduction to wolves from the perspective of one wolf and his memorable journey. (additional resources, map) (Fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-289593-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
Entrancing and uplifting.
A small dog, the elderly woman who owns him, and a homeless girl come together to create a tale of serendipity.
Piper, almost 12, her parents, and her younger brother are at the bottom of a long slide toward homelessness. Finally in a family shelter, Piper finds that her newfound safety gives her the opportunity to reach out to someone who needs help even more. Jewel, mentally ill, lives in the park with her dog, Baby. Unwilling to leave her pet, and forbidden to enter the shelter with him, she struggles with the winter weather. Ree, also homeless and with a large dog, helps when she can, but after Jewel gets sick and is hospitalized, Baby’s taken to the animal shelter, and Ree can’t manage the complex issues alone. It’s Piper, using her best investigative skills, who figures out Jewel’s backstory. Still, she needs all the help of the shelter Firefly Girls troop that she joins to achieve her accomplishment: to raise enough money to provide Jewel and Baby with a secure, hopeful future and, maybe, with their kindness, to inspire a happier story for Ree. Told in the authentic alternating voices of loving child and loyal dog, this tale could easily slump into a syrupy melodrama, but Pyron lets her well-drawn characters earn their believable happy ending, step by challenging step, by reaching out and working together. Piper, her family, and Jewel present white; Pyron uses hair and naming convention, respectively, to cue Ree as black and Piper’s friend Gabriela as Latinx.
Entrancing and uplifting. (Fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-283922-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2019
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